


Rage, Rage, Against the Dying of the Light

by HauntedByDayDreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Billie wants Dean's soul, Castiel Angst, Castiel Dies, Castiel Feels, Castiel Loves Dean Winchester, Castiel Whump, Castiel dies for Dean, Dark, Dean is brain-dead, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, M/M, Nearly Human Castiel, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8509546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HauntedByDayDreams/pseuds/HauntedByDayDreams
Summary: The blood behind his eyes grows thick as his vision sharpens with the rush of adrenaline, but there are no monsters to fight, no demons to smite. There is nothing he can do.Castiel, who is maybe an angel and maybe a human and maybe a mixture of both, cries openly in the hallway in front of the human doctor.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light." -Dylan Thomas
> 
> Major character death. I'm sorry if I cause you emotion distress, haha.
> 
> Set a few years after the latest episodes- Castiel's grace is failing him.

Castiel feels numb.

At one point in his life- at most- Castiel could have touched Dean and healed him. Two fingers, a concentrated burst of energy; back when things were simpler, when he was fully an angel, it would have been easy. He looks down at his hands now, where they lie limply in his lap on top of the folds of his coat. Useless, unable to even muster the power needed to make colour return to Dean's pallid, sunken face, let Cas see those vibrant green eyes again.

Brain-dead. The words ricochet around Castiel's skull like a bullet in a steel drum.

_"But you can heal him? You can help him?" Castiel's voice is strained, like a washcloth wrung too tightly. He can barely swallow over the lump in his throat, and his eyes burn irritably; he's losing control of his emotions, but the once stoic angel can't find it himself to care._

_The doctor is a timid-looking man, his face contrite and pinched. Cas can tell speaking is as much the man's forte as it is his own. "Sir, I told you. Brain- neurological death is, well. It is, by definition, death. I can't bring anyone back from that."_

_"But those machines... You called it life support."_

_The doctor mutters under his breath, perhaps wondering if Castiel is defective in some way, unable to understand a misnomer. His eyes flicker towards the room, where Dean is laid, and Castiel's follow. "That's what we call it, but- and I'm sorry- Mr. Ackles's vegetative state can't really be defined as being alive." The doctor's plain-spoken words dissolved into gibberish about organs and pumping blood through cold hearts and empty heads, but Cas can't hear anything over the wind in his ears. The blood behind his eyes grows thick as his vision sharpens with the rush of adrenaline, but there are no monsters to fight, no demons to smite. There is nothing he can do._

_Castiel, who is maybe an angel and maybe a human and maybe a mixture of both, cries openly in the hallway in front of the human doctor._

Even now, Castiel's eyes are puffy and his temples throb with a mild headache. Crying, cathartic? Not at all. In fact, now Cas feels worse. Feels the degradation of such an obscenely human response to something that he should have been able to prevent. Even on the phone, telling Sam who was still five towns over and breaking every speed limit and law of the roads to get there, even then he couldn't control his voice, the tremors and cracks. That alone had told Sam what he needed to know. That he was already too late.

Oh, _God_. A world without Dean- he couldn't- he could barely even remember a time before the scrappy hunter had entered his life. Dean had consumed him wholly and swiftly; from the moment Castiel had held Dean close and flown with him from Hell, he'd begun to change. Castiel, the obedient rebel. Castiel, the allegiant traitor. Castiel was a paradox, falling head over heels without bearings, and Dean had become the anchor that kept him from flying too close to the sun and getting burned.

And now he was gone.

And Dean, Dean wasn't even going to die with his real name. He would be buried under the alias written on his fake identification. It was an odd detail to be bothered by, at a moment like this, but the idea seemed suddenly intolerable.

"Dean..."

The name sounds dry on his lips now, with no one to hear it. He pulls the chair closer to the hospital bed, the grating of metal on tile momentarily drowning out the heart monitor's rhythmic blips. He slowly places his hands on the bed, next to Dean's own limp one, hesitating before taking his hand into his own. Dean's hand is still warm, skin toughened from years of wielding guns and knives and everything else. Cas runs the pad of his thumb over Dean's palm, staring fixedly into his lax face, willing him to open his eyes, say something, hell, even just twitch, anything to let Cas know he's not too far gone to come back this time.

"Dean... I..." Castiel doesn't know what to say, or how to say it. He doesn't even know if it means anything to say something at all now. After so many years of hesitation, of being afraid to tell Dean of his affections, it doesn't seem to right to say it now when everything he says falls on deaf ears. Still, the words nearly tumble out of his lips, his lips pursing to speak, when the hairs on the back of his neck raise in the way that they only do when you're being watched.

Castiel turns around.

There, in the doorway, stood a Reaper. Castiel had never met her before, never come across her in Heaven and certainly not on Earth, but he knows that her vessel is considered distinctly beautiful- clear, dark skin, strong cheek bones and blooming lips, piercing eyes. She had the aura of someone who had come to watch a great spectacle, along for cheap thrills, but as she stared back at Cas, arms folded across her chest as she leaned against the doorway, he knew she could also seem imposing and powerful.

A muscle jumps in Cas's jaw. His stomach suddenly feels like he's swallowed a cube of ice. _Not a Reaper. Not here._ He unwittingly squeezes Dean's hand. "It's not his time. Leave him."

There was something virulent in the Reaper's wan smile; she steps away from the door, letting her arms fall to her sides where her hands curl in loose fists.

"The first day he died was his time, Castiel. What dies should stay dead. It's the natural order." She was pacing slowly nearer the bed, prompting Cas to stand defensively between her and the unresponsive hunter.

"Stop." Castiel's voice was hoarse, trembling. He knew who she was, now. This was Billie, the Reaper Sam and Dean had told him about.

The Reaper who'd promised to throw his boys' souls into the Empty.

Hidden beneath his sleeve, his angel blade presses against his forearm. The blood pounding in his ears is deafening.

"Castiel, please," she says, and Castiel thinks how strange it is for such a warm voice to make his skin crawl so. "The time for theatrics is over. His time is over."

He allows his blade to slip into his fingers. Billie's eyes follow the movement. "It's not until I say it is."

Billie laughed an empty, mirthless laugh. "That's what you seem to think." Then, she strikes.

Castiel hadn't fought another angel in a long, long time. The past few years with the boys had been standard salt-and-burns, the few stranger monster-types here and there, but nothing that had ever come close to the strength of a fully charged Warrior of God. Besides that, Castiel had very little of his angel grace left in him, and was in fact closer to humanity than seraph status now. For that reason, Billie's first punch across his face leaves him reeling, clutching at a broken nose already pouring blood for several seconds before he straightened up brandishing his blade. He stands, swaying, waiting for his vision to clear while Billie scrutinises him.

"Look at you," she cooed. "Are you human, Castiel? Do I need to back down a little, make it a fair fight?"

The growl that rips from Castiel's throat is feral as he slashes wildly at her with his blade. She easily deflects it with her forearm, shunting him back against the bed.

"Do you have a soul? Or when you die, will you go to the empty, too?"

Castiel attacks again; and again; and again. Once or twice he nicks her with the blade, causing her to hiss in pain, but he can't get a solid hit on her. Part of him wonders if she's toying with him, because it seems to him that she's very in control of what is becoming a very drawn-out fight. His injuries continue to stack up while he becomes more and more sluggish with his advances.

Billie tisks to herself after kicking Castiel down, his blade clattering across the floor. Blood is running into his eyes from a wound on his brow, blood spilling over his lips, blood creeping through the white of his button-up. His eyes are unfocused, his slippery hands scrabbling on the floor for purchase as he heaves his aching body up, but Billie stomps down on his back with one of her boot-clad feet, hard.

"Dean Winchester is the reason you're disgraced," Billie says without malice. Rather, she says it plainly, factually. "The reason you fell. Why do you love him?"

Castiel spits a glob of blood onto the white floor, struggling to draw breath with Billie's boot grinding into his ribcage. 

"It doesn't matter why, in the end," Billie continues. "Whatever the reasons, there will always be the same outcome." Something about the finality of her words makes Castiel snap his head towards her in alarm.

Billie gestures towards Dean, and the breathing tube is suddenly laying on the ground.

Horrible rasping noises begin to issue from Dean's throat.

"N-no! _NO_!" Castiel wrenches his weight to once side, effectively toppling Billie over. Before he can grab his angel blade, it's in her hands, then at his throat. Cerulean eyes, a stark contrast against the bright red running down his face, stare at the prone and silent body in the bed in horror.

"Ah," Billie breathes, "here we are."

Castiel's heart is a broken thing rattling around inside his chest as he stares at a space beside the bed that a mortal would only see as empty air.

Dean is standing, disheveled and opaque, staring down first at his own lifeless body, and then down at the angel. His eyes are just as green as they were when he was alive, his hair messy, his freckles standing out against porcelain skin.

"Cas..?" he asks, and his voice holds a twinge of fear. Fear for himself, fear for the angel, Cas doesn't know, but what he does know is that Dean is now staring at Billie like she's- well, like she's the Reaper come to collect. "What's..." His voice falters, his eyes growing wide with horrified understanding. He steps forward shakily.

"Dean," Castiel says, halting the hunter in his tracks. Cas swallows drily; his throat bumps against the blade. His broken fingers unfurl towards his human as he shakily inhales, grinding out, "I'm so sorry, Dean. I..."

The seconds before the end seem to stretch into infinity- and in a way, they do. In those seconds, he sees himself rescuing Dean from Hell, falling from grace, falling for these sophisticated monkeys with their strange ways and stranger emotions. He regrets none of it. Only that this final act wasn't enough to save the person he loves.

_I hope I'm sent to the Empty. Heaven isn't Heaven without Dean._

Then, _darkness_.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you thought, I always appreciate it! :)


End file.
